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Big Marriage Defeat Looms In 2014 (Parts 4 And 5)

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var addthis_config = {“data_track_addressbar”:true};Parts 4 & 5 in a 7-part investigative series

Republican political operatives are about to give anti-LGBT hate groups just what they crave: a lopsided defeat for gay rights in the deepest South. NCRM’s 7-part investigative series reveals how progress toward marriage equality in other states is threatened by current events in Florida.

Part 4 of 7:  Party Plans

If EMFL’s campaign fails, that will advance two Republican Party goals:  (1) blocking the spread of marriage equality; and (2) attempting to repeal it wherever it exists.

When the first same-gender couples married in 2004, the GOP launched efforts to ban and repeal same-gender civil marriage, everywhere, forever, via the U.S. Constitution, as written on page 10 of the latest Republican Party Platform.  The prior platform said  — with no proof whatsoever — that being raised by two lesbian mothers makes children more likely to become criminals, drop-outs, violent, pregnant, and/or poor.

When the Republican Party wants to run a stealth campaign, it often calls GOP strategist Tim Mooney.

When Utah banned same-gender civil marriage in 2004, it was Tim Mooney who ran that campaign.  After ten years of discrimination, Mooney’s ban was found unconstitutional by a U.S. district court in late 2013, and for 18 days, Utah’s same-gender couples were marrying, until the ruling was stayed pending an appeal.  Also in 2004, Mooney put Ralph Nader on the presidential ballot in several states, which helped put Republican George Bush in the White House because some of Democrat John Kerry’s voters then switched to Nader.  In 2010, Mooney helped elect Republican Rick Perry as governor of Texas by secretly launching a separate, stealth campaign to split liberal votes between a Democratic candidate and a Green Party candidate, which then left Perry with more votes than either of his other two opponents.

On 9 May 2013, around the time that Mooney helped launch EMFL, he spoke at a “Latinos & Conservatism” conference in Las Vegas, where he represented the Faith & Freedom Coalition, an anti-LGBT group where the mission includes repealing and banning marriage nationwide.

In June 2013, Mooney helped launch twin marriage campaigns:  EMFL (Equal Marriage Florida) in the east, and EMAZ (Equal Marriage Arizona) in the west.  Both met with similar suspicion and resistance from the LGBT community.  Two months after he launched EMAZ, its leaders closed the doors.  Seven months after he launched EMFL, its leaders refused to itemize their progress or plans for this article.

In August 2013, Mooney admitted that he was working as a political consultant to marriage equality campaigns — but that he was doing so in order to benefit the Republican Party.  Mooney excused his marriage equality consulting work to fellow conservatives by calling it “the most effective strategy for the future of the GOP” — the party that’s still working to ban and repeal same-gender marriages nationwide.  Like Brito, Gray, and other EMFL leaders, Mooney did not respond to multiple e-mail and phone requests to be interviewed for this article.

On 17 December, Vanessa Brito wrote and recommended contacting Ron Nielson at Our America Initiative, the conservative Libertarian political organization that backs EMFL, and that is named on every EMFL Web page as “Sponsor.”  But it appears that she didn’t want anyone to reach him at all, because she misspelled his name as “Nielsen” and gave a fake, non-existent e-mail address of RTNielsen@NSOinfo.com.  Tracking down the real Ron Nielson was revealing:  he did not want to be quoted anywhere, and would not speak on the record.

Brito’s refusal to answer interview questions, Gray’s refusal to correct the previously published numbers, Mooney’s failure to return inquiries, and Nielson’s refusal to be quoted are all very odd for a statewide campaign in which every signature and every vote matters, and for which any publicity is helpful.  But refusing to talk is not surprising, according to Professor Andrew Koppelman, instructor in law and political science at Northwestern University, who says that not returning reporters’ inquiries is “one of the basic rules of any stealth organization.”

Tim Mooney isn’t the only person associated with EMFL who worked to defeat marriage equality.  EMFL Chairperson/Treasurer Vanessa Brito did, too.  She was the Project Manager & Media Expert for the Hispanic Leadership Fund, a conservative group, where she worked trying to get Mitt Romney elected President of the United States.  During that campaign, Romney publicly signed a written vow to outlaw, repeal, and ban same-gender marriages via the U.S. Constitution.  He was defeated in November 2012.  Seven months later, Brito appointed herself as Chairperson and Treasurer of Equal Marriage Florida.

The only EMFL representative willing to speak on the record is Communications Specialist Joe Hunter from Our America Initiative, which backs EMFL, and is named on every EMFL Web page as “Sponsor.”  Hunter believes that EMFL has made some progress, yet when asked for current figures on staffing, signatures, or fund-raising, he replied, “I really couldn’t answer; I simply don’t know.”

Part 5 of 7:  Haters Wait with Bated Breath

By the 1 February deadline shown on its Web site, EMFL either will succeed at putting the marriage question on Florida’s ballot, or else will fail to put it on the ballot.  All indications are that EMFL will fail.  If the November claim of only 200,000 signatures is accurate, then the remaining 800,000 signatures can’t be collected by the deadline, because there are only three remaining part-time, unpaid district co-chairs who still show working e-mail addresses (no co-chairs show any phone numbers), and each of those three people would have to collect 266,667 more signatures.

That unachievable goal has anti-LGBT hate groups salivating.  As soon as the 1 February deadline is missed, they can start bragging that they just defeated another marriage equality campaign, without lifting a finger.

For LGBT activists, though, staying off the Florida ballot is far safer than getting on it.  If marriage equality appears on either a 2014 or a 2016 ballot, anti-LGBT hate groups nationwide will unleash their usual dragons, fueled and funded by Mormon churchgoers, Catholic bishops, evangelical Dominionists, and NOM’s tiny handful of wealthy, secret donors.  Those groups flooded over $40 million into California’s Proposition 8 battle only 6 years ago, and they’re just itching to repeat themselves.  Florida would make a great showcase for an encore performance.

Meanwhile, EMFL filed Florida campaign finance reports showing that it has collected none of the $6 million that it promised to raise.  To make matters worse, $6 million is probably inadequate.  Brito sells campaign services, marked up to give herself a profit, so her estimated budget is probably too small to:  (a) change cultural attitudes, (b) saturate Florida’s ten media markets, and (c) fight wealthy Mormon and Catholic bishops (whose funds for oppressing LGBT people appear relatively unlimited).

In 2008, although the LGBT community raised $4.3 million to fight Florida’s constitutional marriage ban, anti-equality forces raised only $1.6 million, and yet they won by a 24% landslide.  In Oregon, where the population is about one-fifth of Florida’s, campaign leaders have budgeted $10-12 million, and in Georgia, with half the population of Florida, Georgia
Equality leaders also expect to spend $10 million.  All these data point to two realities for EMFL:  changing cultural attitudes is the critical goal, and EMFL’s $6 million budget is too small to achieve that goal.

Six years ago, Floridians voted, 62% to 38%, against equality.  To reverse that to at least 60% to 40% favoring equality (the minimum needed to pass), any campaign would have to focus resources on changing votes.  Among Florida’s 16 million potential voters, the most labor-intensive are the 7 million who are all over age 50, mostly Republican, and who stridently want to keep the current marriage ban.  Collecting signatures is pointless unless EMFL also persuades nearly 2 million citizens to switch their vote from anti-equality to pro-equality.

Asked how those voters will get converted, OAI spokesman and EMFL Sponsor Joe Hunter says he doesn’t think it’s necessary to change cultural attitudes, and EMFL doesn’t plan to work on that.  “It is close enough.  We don’t have to change a whole bunch of minds.  There are enough people in Florida who are sympathetic to marriage equality to pass it; the challenge is making sure they go vote,” he said.  When asked how OAI and EMFL can be so sure of victory, Hunter replied, “We have done our own polling, and the conclusion is it is not a slam dunk, but we’re certainly in a position to get there.”

Neither OAI nor EMFL is willing to release any of their private poll results, and when asked which public polls convinced OAI to sponsor EMFL, Hunter could not immediately identify any.

Three days later, he did point to three surveys from a newspaper, a university, and a surveyor, but none of those polls suggested that at least 60% of the voters would agree to alter the state constitution.  In October 2012, when the Washington Post asked 1,107 adult registered Florida voters whether same-gender couples should be able to marry, 54% said yes, 33% said no, and 13% had no opinion.  In December 2012, when Quinnipiac University asked 1,261 registered Florida voters the same question, only 43% said yes, and every age group 30 and older fell far short of the critical 60% minimum.  In August 2013, when St. Pete Polls asked 3,034 registered Florida voters (demographically balanced by district, party, race, and age) the same question, only 46% said yes, 47% said no, 7% were unsure, and no age group had the required 60% minimum.

Vanessa Brito says she earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from Florida International University, a curriculum which should have taught her about the need to persuade critical demographic groups.  Apparently it didn’t.  Rather than concentrate on the anti-equality voters, she is focusing instead on Libertarians, moderate Republicans, and the least important group of all:  younger voters, “the people in their 30s, the voters in their 30s” as she told the Miami Herald last June.  The signatures of 30-somethings might put equal marriage on the ballot and win that battle, but ignoring their 7 million Republican parents and grandparents will also defeat equality at the polls, and thus lose the whole war.

In this populous, media-centric state, that’s a defeat which conservatives will crow about for years — and which will help raise more anti-LGBT cash — to the detriment of marriage rights everywhere else.

If EMFL gets the marriage equality question onto any ballot, Floridians — not to mention the rest of the nation — will then suffer through another bitter, vicious campaign in which billboards and broadcasts call LGBT people defective, deviant, depraved, and demonically possessed.  While that campaign rages in this southernmost state, teenagers who are LGBT or who have same-gender parents are likely to be brutalized, and children from all age groups will be victims of the prejudice for which America’s deep-south theocrats are so famous.

Either way, EMFL now is poised to hand the anti-LGBT forces exactly what they want:  a wide victory, in an election year, in a big state.  That victory will come either via EMFL’s failure to collect enough petition signatures, or else via a Proposition-8-style media battle — in which opponents relentlessly advertise that LGBT individuals, couples, and their children don’t even deserve basic human rights — followed by a defeat at the polls.

Tomorrow in this investigative series:  Part 6 – Promising the Impossible, and Part 7 – Prognosis.

skitched-20130320-084004Ned Flaherty is an LGBT activist currently focused on civil marriage equality, and previously on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal. He writes from Boston, Massachusetts, where America’s first same-gender civil marriages began in 2004. He suffered a childhood exposure to Roman Catholic pomp and circumstance, but the spell never took, and he recovered.

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OPINION

Chief Justice ‘Shaken’ by Public Reaction to Him Handing Trump Near-Total Immunity

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October 8, 2024

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Last year, when Donald Trump’s attorneys declared he had “total immunity” from prosecution, many in the legal community scoffed. No president in all of American history had ever proclaimed they could not be convicted for serious violations of law—most infamously, President Richard Nixon had to have been keenly aware he might be criminally prosecuted.

Just eleven days after Nixon resigned the presidency in 1974, TIME reported, “Nixon’s new status as a private citizen puts him in grave peril.”

In fact, TIME continued, “the Watergate grand jury had vigorously wanted to indict Nixon while he was President.”

The American public is aware presidents can be prosecuted for certain crimes, and there is a foundational expectation of that possibility. In February of 2021, after the Democratic House impeached Donald Trump, Senate Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declared the ex-president should face criminal prosecution rather than impeachment.

“Donald Trump’s legal troubles are far from over, despite his acquittal in the U.S. Senate impeachment trial that ended on Saturday,” Reuters reported on February 16, 2021. “Minority Leader Mitch McConnell noted this just moments after voting to acquit Trump, saying the courts are the proper forum for holding the former president accountable for his role in the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters.”

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We now know that after Special Counsel Jack Smith asked the U.S. Supreme Court to settle the claim of “presidential immunity” by Trump’s attorneys, it refused, waiting for a lower court to weigh in. Chief Justice John Roberts sent a “scathing critique of [that] lower-court decision and a startling preview of how the high court would later rule,” The New York Times reported last month.

“Behind the scenes, the chief justice molded three momentous Jan. 6 and election cases that helped determine the former president’s fate,” according to The Times’ reporting.

“’I think it likely that we will view the separation of powers analysis differently’ from the appeals court, he wrote,” The Times reported, offering this interpretation for the Chief Justice’s message: “In other words: grant Mr. Trump greater protection from prosecution.”

During oral arguments at the Supreme Court, Trump’s attorney, John Sauer, had literally argued a president could order a coup and be protected by immunity because it was an “official act” of the presidency.

Sauer also argued a president could order the assassination of a political rival and still have immunity from prosecution.

Chief Justice Roberts responded to the “momentous trio of Jan. 6-related cases…by deploying his authority to steer rulings that benefited Mr. Trump, according to a New York Times examination that uncovered extensive new information about the court’s decision making.”

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In short, the Chief Justice used his powers to intervene and craft an opinion that some experts have said creates new law—certainly nothing that is found in the U.S. Constitution.

“There’s no legal authority for it,” remarked CNN legal analyst Norm Eisen back in December.

Nor, as the “originalist” far-right justices on the bench have adopted, does Chief Justice Roberts’ ruling lie in the “history and tradition” of the United States.

And yet, despite decades of history starting with Richard Nixon, and despite the scathing dissenting opinion from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, CNN reports on Tuesday, Chief Justice Roberts “was shaken by the adverse public reaction to his decision affording Trump substantial immunity from criminal prosecution. His protestations that the case concerned the presidency, not Trump, held little currency.”

“The Roberts Court has been in sync with the GOP political agenda largely because of decisions the chief justice has authored: For Trump and other Republicans. Against voting rights and racial affirmative action. Against federal regulations over environmental, public health and consumer affairs,” CNN’s Chief Supreme Court Analyst Joan Biskupic reported. “Roberts, joined by his five fellow conservatives, found that the former president was entitled to presumptive, if not absolute, immunity for actions related to his official acts. Roberts’ view of official acts, as opposed to private ones, was vast.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissenting opinion on Trump’s immunity blasted Roberts and the far-right justices, famously declaring:

“Today’s decision to grant former Presidents criminal immunity reshapes the institution of the Presidency.  It makes a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law. Relying on little more than its own misguided wisdom about the need for ‘bold and unhesitating action’ by the President, the Court gives former President Trump all the immunity he asked for and more.”

She also wrote:

“The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military dissenting coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune. Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

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‘They Are Partners’: Experts Warn on Trump and Putin After Bombshell Woodward Revelations

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October 8, 2024

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Political experts and top journalists are delving into reports from Bob Woodward’s new book, and issuing warnings about Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin as Americans face a historic and pivotal election just four weeks from today.

CNN obtained a copy of Woodward’s latest, titled, “War.” In it, the Watergate journalist delivers stunning revelations.

Donald Trump, the ex-president and Republican Party’s presidential nominee, has continued his secret relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Christian nationalism-aligned autocrat and alleged war criminal. According to excerpts from Woodward’s book, Trump has spoken to Putin at least seven times since he left office in January of 2021.

Another bombshell: Trump sent Putin COVID tests at the height of the deadly pandemic while Americans were desperately seeking them. Putin warned the U.S. president to not tell anyone, “because people will get mad at you, not me.” More than 1.2 million Americans died from the deadly disease.

And still more: President Joe Biden knew months ahead of time that Putin would attack Ukraine, via a “treasure trove of intelligence,” including human intelligence from inside the Kremlin, and warned President Zelenskyy, who did not believe the Russian president would be so foolish. Later, as the illegal war was going badly, Biden administration officials warned Putin to not use nuclear weapons, which he had been considering. Reportedly, there was a 50-50 chance Putin would go nuclear.

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“’That fucking Putin,’ Biden said to advisers in the Oval Office not long after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to Woodward,” CNN reports. Biden added: “Putin is evil. We are dealing with the epitome of evil.”

Critics are expressing anger and astonishment amid the latest revelations.

David Rothkopf, the noted foreign policy, national security, and political affairs analyst and commentator shared his observations via social media: “So, let me get this straight, Donald Trump was sitting in Mar-a-Lago on a trove of stolen U.S. national secrets and while there, had Vladimir Putin on speed dial for regular private chats? After he tried to overthrow our government? And Putin is helping his campaign now? And there are people who would actually vote for this guy? It’s obvious he has no qualms about betraying the U.S. The question is why are those who support him willing to help him do so?”

The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser added, “This day is a reminder that Trump kept a trove of secret classified foreign intel at Mar-a-Lago. Will there ever be a trial???”

Matt McDermott, a Democratic strategist remarked: “Americans were dying by the tens of thousands and supply shortages were paralyzing our country’s pandemic response, and all Donald Trump cared about was helping Vladimir Putin. This is unconscionable.”

Dr. Norman Ornstein, the well-known political scientist and AEI emeritus scholar noted: “So Trump sent Covid tests to Putin when there was a shortage here. Meaning it is very likely that some people died as a consequence of his sucking up to his dictator buddy. Then add that he talked to Putin multiple times after leaving office. What top secrets did he share?”

Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell wrote: “Hard to believe this guy is still a coin flip away from a second term.”

Dan Barr, Chief Deputy Attorney General of Arizona responded to Rampell, writing: “Trump’s fan boy fascination with Vladimir Putin will someday be fertile ground for psychobiographers, but for now it is disqualifying for him to be President of the United States. Ronald Reagan would certainly think so, as do all his former aides who now support @KamalaHarris.”

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Some noted that as Trump secretly sent Putin COVID tests, “in at least three instances” he “played politics and deliberately delayed disaster relief as president” because he did not want to send it to Democratic areas of the country, according to PEOPLE.

Ian Sams, senior national spokesperson and senior adviser to the Kamala Harris presidential campaign, posted this to social media:

Alexander Vindman is the former Director for European Affairs for the U.S. National Security Council (NSC). His congressional testimony on the Trump-Ukraine alleged extortion scandal led to Trump’s first impeachment.

On Trump’s “7 meetings with Putin,” he warns: “It is reasonable there is a recording of these calls in an exquisite intel program. Trump would not be the target of the collection, but because Putin is a high-value target, Trump would be caught in the collection. The Russians definitely have a recording of every call.”

“Trump’s 7 calls with Putin also explain why Putin was emboldened to launch the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and sustain more than 2 years of war. Putin has made a huge investment in Trump and expects that investment to payoff,” Vindman adds. “It’s clear now more than ever that @realDonaldTrump was the decisive factor in convincing Putin to wage a wider war on Ukraine. Trump has taken the world to the brink of Armageddon. A second Trump term would have America—& with it the entire world—go over the precipice. Trump was, is, & will be a clear & present danger to the United States.”

Investigative journalist Dave Troy, who has written extensively about Vladimir Putin, in April at The Washington Spectator warned: “Trump’s Peace Plan? Nuclear Blackmail.”

On Tuesday he weighed in on the Woodward bombshells.

“The best way to understand Trump’s ongoing fealty to Putin is that they intend, together with Musk, Vance, Gabbard, Ramaswamy, Thiel, RFK, Orban, Kim Jong Un, and friends, to reorder the world using nuclear blackmail,” he wrote at the start of a lengthy thread on X. Troy concludes, “when you read that Trump sent Putin COVID tests in 2020, and has spoken with him seven times since being out of office, know why: they are partners.”

Watch MSNBC’s report below or at this link.

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‘Dangerous’: Musk Laughing at Idea of ‘Puppet’ Kamala Harris Being Killed Sparks Fury

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17 hours ago

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October 8, 2024

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The U.S. Secret Service reportedly intervened last month after tech billionaire Elon Musk, whose companies have received billions in taxpayer dollars through federal defense and intelligence contracts, subsidies, tax credits, and loans, posted a so-called “joke” on his social media platform X claiming no one is even attempting to assassinate President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris.

In a nearly two-hour interview with Tucker Carlson that posted Monday, Musk and the far right-wing host wisecracked about both his original post and his thoughts that led to the now-removed tweet.

After laughing about what will happen to Musk if Donald Trump loses his presidential bid, Musk suggested he will be imprisoned and wondered if he will see his children.

“I’ve been trashing Kampala nonstop,” Musk told Carlson, appearing to pronounce the Vice President’s name incorrectly. “Well, the Kamala puppet, I call her, you know, the machine that the Kampala puppet represents.”

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“Yeah, she’s irrelevant,” Carlson declared, waving his hand in the air dismissively.

“I made a joke, which I realized I deleted, which is like, ‘nobody’s even bothering to try to kill Kamala, because it’s pointless’,” Musk said, laughing with Carlson. “What do you achieve? Nothing. Just buy another puppet.”

“Nobody’s trying to kill Joe Biden,” Musk added. “It would be pointless.”

“Some people interpreted it as I was, as though I was calling for people to assassinate her,” Musk explained. “But I was like, but I was like, doesn’t it seem strange that no one’s even bothered to try?” he asked, laughing.

“Nobody tries to assassinate a puppet,” Musk concluded.

The Daily Beast reports Musk is a “longtime financier of Republican causes,” and “joined Trump last Saturday for his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania—the site of July’s assassination attempt. After jumping around on stage—a move that he was widely mocked for on his own site—the X CEO dished out some fear-mongering about how, if Trump doesn’t win, ‘this will be the last election.'”

Back in February The Wall Street Journal described Musk’s SpaceX as “a major national-security contractor” that “is deepening its ties with U.S. intelligence and military agencies.” The company has “a $1.8 billion classified contract with the U.S. government.”

“The Pentagon has more recently done business with SpaceX’s Starlink broadband service, including agreements to pay for Ukrainian internet links during Ukraine’s war with Russia,” The Journal also reported, noting Starlink has a $70 million U.S. military contract.

A short excerpt (bel0w) from the Musk-Carlson interview dropped Monday night, garnering 5 million views in about 13 hours. It prompted many to express outrage, anger over the violent rhetoric, and concern over a military government contractor joking about presidential assassinations. Some said they believed the FBI or Secret Service should get involved.

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Brad Moss, a well-known national security attorney, commented: “If one of my clients made this ‘joke’ their clearance would be suspended before the interview ended.”

National security expert Olivia Troye served as Vice President Mike Pence’s Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Advisor, and has had roles at roles at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in the intelligence community (at the National Counterterrorism Center,
Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Department of Energy), and at the Department of Defense (DOD) according to her official biography.

“Joking about assassinating our elected leaders is not just tasteless—it’s dangerous,” she warned. “In today’s divided climate, we need responsible voices, not reckless rhetoric that normalizes violence. It’s un-American for Elon Musk & Tucker Carlson to make light of such serious threats. Our leaders—and all Americans—deserve better.”

Christopher Burgess, a writer, speaker and commentator on national security issues who served for over 30 years at the CIA, commented: “Reaction: DISGUSTING

Racist – Misogynist – Cultist

All on display in one 10-15 second sound bite – there is no place for this – anywhere let alone the United States of America”

“Nothing to see here,” remarked gun violence prevention advocate Shannon Watts. “Just a man with classified federal contracts worth billions fantasizing about the assassination of the President and Vice President.”

“Deport this clown,” urged Esquire columnist Charles P. Pierce.

Journalist Jon Ralston, CEO/Editor of The Nevada Independent remarked: “These people are grotesque, the vanguard of Team Trump, simpering fools joking about assassinations. Musk, once thought a visionary, is a pathetic troll on a site he has destroyed.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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